Children’s book pre-1965. All animals drawn to same size – page is then cut in half. A description is on the opposite page and is also cut in half.For example, you could end up with the top half of a giraffe on the bottom of a beagle with the appropriate description.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
I thought this book or another by the same author was mentioned years earlier, but I couldn’t find either one in the Solved Mysteries pages, so the titles may appear elsewhere in Stump the Bookseller. The book with a giraffe is likely Animal Lore and Disorder (1948) by James Riddell. (There were also two dogs, but neither was a beagle.) The sequel, in 1949, was Hit or Myth. As it happens, the layout for that book is better because almost every creature is standing on its hind legs, whereas in the first book, sometimes you practically have to squint to see the hybrids properly.
In both books, even when the halves are matched correctly, the text is often somewhat humorous. In the second book, under Rooster, it says: “This is a terribly annoying and stupid creature. It doesn’t lay any eggs and apparently its only pleasure is to make an awful noise at sunrise and wake everybody up.”
And you can see a few pictures here:
https://www.oldchildrensbooks.com/books/animal-lore-and-disorder-16478